Child of God

Lester Ballard, a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman, is released from jail and allowed to haunt the hill country of East Tennessee, preying on the population with his strange lusts.

McCarthy transforms commonplace brushes with humanity into stunning scenes of the comic and the grotesque, and as the story hurtles toward its unforgettable conclusion, depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humour, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.

©2010 Cormac McCarthy (P)2013 Recorded Books LLC

Critic reviews

"A powerful and talented writer, able to elicit compassion for his protagonist however terrible his actions" ( Sunday Times)

"McCarthy charts the terrible decline of Lester Ballard with passion, tenderness, eloquence, and a humour which…is attuned perfectly to the bitter wryness of the South." ( Times Literary Supplement)

"His prose, unfailingly beautiful and exact, carries us into a dreamworld of astonishing and violent revelation" (Tobias Wolff)